story3510.xml
Title
story3510.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-11
911DA Story: Story
It was a quiet morning--most are around here. South Dayton Presbyterian Church is rather small, and not much happens on Tuesdays.
The only other person due in the office had just arrived when he received a phone call from his wife. He disappeared into his office to take the call, and I phoned my mother-in-law regarding some mundane family thing.
She told me that she had just got off the phone with my father-in-law; he was watching a breaking news story from New York. The World Trade Center had been "hit." I thought immediately of the 1993 car bomb attack; I was startled, in a rather distant way. A million images of a nation prone to violence flickered in my mind. Just before I filed this one away, however something told me that I needed to find out more. This one would not fade so easily.
The church has no radio and only one archaic TV in the building. I went to my coworker's office to suggest we check an online news service for a possible big news story.
I poked my head into his office. His tear-filled eyes met my surprised ones. It did not occur to me that he was distressed over a personal crisis or an unrelated matter. The tightness in my stomach told me that this was a disaster deeper than I could yet fathom. He confirmed something worse than my worst fear--a plane has slammed into EACH of the Twin Towers. The information reeled in my head. I only dimly heard him say "hijackers" as I struggled to process the information.
We scrambled to snatch the old TV from a back room. We plugged it in right in the church lobby. The grainy screen revealed all--smoke billowing from gaping holes in the giant structures, frantic newsmen relaying the breaking story from the sidewalk of a terrified city.
We barely had time to take it in before we saw the first tower begin to crumble. We both talked at once.
"What happened?"
"Is that an explosion?"
"How much of the building fell?"
For me, the worst moment of the entire ordeal was the moment, as Jonathan and I both squinted through the debris-filled screen, I realized the first tower was gone. Not mostly gone. Gone. In that moment things I never could have imagined five minutes ago were now completely, terribly possible. It was the moment I accepted the fact that far worse could, and in fact would, happen.
We barely spoke for what seemed like years. We watched in shocked silence the fall of the second tower and the endless stream of horrifying information before our eyes. We were alone with our own thoughts, yet sharing the experience as fellow Christians, fellow citizens, fellow humans.
We did share our thoughts--as soon as we could make sense of them ourselves--and took comfort in the fact that we stood on very common ground. Things did happen around us--the phone rang, a nearby road worker stopped in--but all swirled around one topic, one tragedy. The everyday things that consumed so much of our time became foreign and unreal. We endured it as long as there was immediate news to report. As the dust swirled around the ruins of the World Trade Center, and the stories began to emerge of individuals both dead and alive, we looked at each other once more, and silently agreed. We were going home. Our thoughts fled to our loved ones. Jonathan's thoughts were of his wife and son; mine sought my husband. This was a long way from over, but in that moment we took the first step towards healing.
We parted in the best possible way; we prayed. To this day, the one thing that comes to me in remembering the tragedy of a year ago is what came to me then.
God help us all.
The only other person due in the office had just arrived when he received a phone call from his wife. He disappeared into his office to take the call, and I phoned my mother-in-law regarding some mundane family thing.
She told me that she had just got off the phone with my father-in-law; he was watching a breaking news story from New York. The World Trade Center had been "hit." I thought immediately of the 1993 car bomb attack; I was startled, in a rather distant way. A million images of a nation prone to violence flickered in my mind. Just before I filed this one away, however something told me that I needed to find out more. This one would not fade so easily.
The church has no radio and only one archaic TV in the building. I went to my coworker's office to suggest we check an online news service for a possible big news story.
I poked my head into his office. His tear-filled eyes met my surprised ones. It did not occur to me that he was distressed over a personal crisis or an unrelated matter. The tightness in my stomach told me that this was a disaster deeper than I could yet fathom. He confirmed something worse than my worst fear--a plane has slammed into EACH of the Twin Towers. The information reeled in my head. I only dimly heard him say "hijackers" as I struggled to process the information.
We scrambled to snatch the old TV from a back room. We plugged it in right in the church lobby. The grainy screen revealed all--smoke billowing from gaping holes in the giant structures, frantic newsmen relaying the breaking story from the sidewalk of a terrified city.
We barely had time to take it in before we saw the first tower begin to crumble. We both talked at once.
"What happened?"
"Is that an explosion?"
"How much of the building fell?"
For me, the worst moment of the entire ordeal was the moment, as Jonathan and I both squinted through the debris-filled screen, I realized the first tower was gone. Not mostly gone. Gone. In that moment things I never could have imagined five minutes ago were now completely, terribly possible. It was the moment I accepted the fact that far worse could, and in fact would, happen.
We barely spoke for what seemed like years. We watched in shocked silence the fall of the second tower and the endless stream of horrifying information before our eyes. We were alone with our own thoughts, yet sharing the experience as fellow Christians, fellow citizens, fellow humans.
We did share our thoughts--as soon as we could make sense of them ourselves--and took comfort in the fact that we stood on very common ground. Things did happen around us--the phone rang, a nearby road worker stopped in--but all swirled around one topic, one tragedy. The everyday things that consumed so much of our time became foreign and unreal. We endured it as long as there was immediate news to report. As the dust swirled around the ruins of the World Trade Center, and the stories began to emerge of individuals both dead and alive, we looked at each other once more, and silently agreed. We were going home. Our thoughts fled to our loved ones. Jonathan's thoughts were of his wife and son; mine sought my husband. This was a long way from over, but in that moment we took the first step towards healing.
We parted in the best possible way; we prayed. To this day, the one thing that comes to me in remembering the tragedy of a year ago is what came to me then.
God help us all.
Collection
Citation
“story3510.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 25, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/8702.